Item: Magnolia
Rating: 6
Author: JP Lopez

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Canon Canada uses Magnolia as the primary CMS platform for managing and building out the pages for their main consumer website: Canon.ca. It is used by multiple departments within the company with varying levels of web expertise and solves the main problem of simplifying the process of publishing and managing web and product pages for everyone involved.

Pros and Cons

Clean and organized user interface
[The] flexibility of building out templates for users
Good security and access to [the] visibility of user records

Give users specification details and or tips for module items and fields (ie. explain what the fields would do to the front end-user)
Batch upload drag and drop for assets/images
[The] simpler way to find out the URL of a page without publishing for both EN/FR users
No way to revert to past versions of a page that hasn't been published live
A way to copy a specific module on a page with all the fields and settings completed and paste it to a different page

Return on Investment

Magnolia has reduced the need for complex pages with a good template-based system.
Magnolia has slowed down when multiple users are attempting to publish pages at the same time, which has been less than ideal for important product launches.

Usability

Although the back end of Magnolia is extremely clean from a design perspective and is pretty straightforward once the user learns and has experience with it, there are a few items and modules that could be more simplified and has some unnecessary extra steps. I think the biggest problem is since there are so many streamlined features in the back end, there needs to be a quick and accessible way to find out what each item does for the end-user.

Performance

Overall, Magnolia is fairly good with performance and I have only experienced system strain a handful of times. A page with more complicated modules can be a bit slow when working on it in Magnolia, but that's understandable and can also be a network issue.

Alternatives Considered

Drupal and WordPress

I've used a number of Content Management Systems in the past that have similar features to Magnolia including custom ones that aren't widely used or can be listed, but Drupal is probably the most comparable. I would say that Drupal is more kind to custom code and overall flexibility for users who have a bit more experience with HTML. Magnolia is definitely more suited for template-based design.

Other Software Used

Adobe PhotoShop, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Dreamweaver

Likelihood to Recommend

Based on my experience, Magnolia is well-suited for companies and users who do not need the flexibility of having advanced HTML pages and don't need pages built and added to the front-end of the website fairly quickly with user feedback (ie. Blogs). Although overriding CSS styles to templates is possible, [it's] very cumbersome and can often create template errors that can ruin all progress done to a page.

Magnolia is an exceptional CMS

Overall Satisfaction with Magnolia